Archive for
September, 2009

On Sunday, we were in Mondragon to meet Nora’s cousin Chloé for the first time. Chloé is the same relationship depth to Nora as Cousin Rodrigo. Chloé is Nora’s mother’s mother’s brother’s son’s daughter. Marga and Chloé’s father, Andoni, are first cousins. We went to Chloé’s parents’ wedding just over a year ago. Chloé’s mother is French, so she will be growing up in a bilingual household like Nora.(more…)

On Saturday afternoon, we took a stroll around the center of Burgos and visited the Burgos Cathedral. To get there, we had to walk a little along the Arlanzón River that runs through the center of Burgos. It was a beautiful day and a wonderful walk. I now invite you to walk along with us with this slightly picture-heavy post.(more…)

On Saturday, we drove two hours to the city of Burgos to meet Nora’s youngest cousin, Rodrigo, for his two week birthday and baptism. Rodrigo is related to Nora because – concentrate here! – he is Nora’s mother’s father’s sister’s daughter’s son. His grandmother and Nora’s grandfather are siblings. I had never been to Burgos, and I was interested in seeing its famous cathedral. With two cars and two conflicting GPS guides, we somehow managed to park near Rodrigo’s neighborhood.(more…)

The video they can’t stop showing on the Spanish news cycle today, besides the one where Obama thanks a member of the Spanish royal family for being in attendance when she was not (what’s Spanish for faux pas?), is of a restaurant in Jávea, Alicante, where a tornado came by and took the roof off while customers were eating inside. Clearly Spain doesn’t have the kind of tornadoes that the US does, because no one was sucked out and thrown miles away, but it’s pretty darn scary enough as it is.(more…)

Two nights ago, we put Nora to bed at her normal 9:00 PM bedtime, and she slept like a baby for about an hour. At that point, she began singing at the top of her lungs. Since Marga wanted to go to bed, she brought Nora downstairs and gave the little songbird to me to watch after. The songs continued for 2.5 hours.

I got a couple requests after a recent post to share some audio of what the Monkey Alarm sounds like. Well, this is more or less it.(more…)

A little while ago, I had an idea for a cool photography project to visualize Nora’s growth, one that hopefully won’t involve peeing on electronics. My idea is to take a photo of Nora at six months old on one side of our sofa, and then take another picture of her at one year with her slightly to the right of her previous position. Ditto for 18 months and 2 years. Then, I can photoshop them all together to have four versions of Nora sitting together on the sofa! Cool, huh?(more…)

When these pajamas arrived from Bulgaria back in April, they seemed so strange. All the pajamas and clothes we’d received for Nora until that point were pretty, soft pastels and small newborn-sized. The strong dark purple and green in these enormous pajamas seemed so…not for babies. Not to mention that all the pajamas we had had feet built in, and these were cut off at the ankle. When we stored the seemingly huge pajamas for way in the future, we didn’t even notice that the way they are fastened differs as well, with the snaps going all the way down just one leg. Weird.(more…)

As my daughter approaches her 6-month birthday, she has just recently gotten her head around the concept of Self vs. Not Self. As in, she can tell what objects in her field of vision are part of her own body and what are not. So obviously she has no idea that humans come in two sexes, and that other humans have body parts that she lacks, and certainly no clue about how the sexes interact to reproduce. My complaint, therefore, is not on her behalf, but on the behalf of the adults around her that have to watch her grasping this big squeaky toy that bares no small resemblance to the human male sexual organ.(more…)

A few months ago I acquired the DVD box set of every episode of Seinfeld, all nine seasons. Since then, I’ve been making my way through them one hilarious 22-minute episode at a time. It’s always funny to see actors in guest spots on old television shows that later went on to become more famous. Imagine my surprise when I got to the first episode of season six, The Mango, and see that George’s girlfriend is played by 27-year-old Lisa Edelstein, who now plays Dr. Lisa Cuddy on my current favorite television show, House.(more…)